The Huck-A-Buck Chronicles:
MikeBo’s Blog for Thursday 25 October 2018
Clear 50°F/ 10°C in Riverhead, NY
Cloudy 70°F/21°C in Cedar Park, TX
Dzień dobry, Panie i panowie!
(Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen!)
Any youngster
who ever went to school at Aquebogue Elementary knows from HUCK-A-BUCK! But, most of
the folks who read my blogs never went to Aquebogue Elementary School. First,
it’s
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| Michael, Dana, Laura, MikeBo |
I attended
Aquebogue Elementary for one year before my parents moved into town and I
finished growing up in Riverhead, New York. During that year, 1946, I made some
life-long friendships: Tom Medsger, Ginny Kratoville, “Bubbie” Brown, Susan
Downs and Linda Tyte among them. When my folks bought our house on east Main
Street and moved into Riverhead, I didn’t see my first grade friends until we
went to high school. My brother Packy and I attended Roanoke Avenue Elementary School, then
Riverhead Junior High and then Riverhead
High School, where I graduated in 1958 at age 17. My kid brother graduated in
1963.
Good ol’
Huck-a-Buck didn’t have kindergarten, so I managed to skip the preliminaries,
which meant that, at age 77, I was hobbling off to the 60th
anniversary reunion of the Riverhead High School Class of 1958. There were about sixty-five of
us – surviving classmates along with our spouses and guests. The graduates followed
different paths after the strains of Pomp
and Circumstance faded away. Some of my classmates stayed put after
graduation, living their lives in the old home town. Others left for a while –
going away to college or serving their country in distance places like Vietnam.
I fell into the last category. After staying around for a couple of years, I
headed out and didn’t set foot in my home town until 2003. This reunion was
very special. My son Michael and my daughter Dana came along with me. So did
Michael’s wife, Laura. Dana and I came from Texas. Michael and Laura traveled
from Rome. For me, it was a sentimental journey of the highest order.
My parents,
Charles and Mary “Skip” Botula first came to Riverhead in 1940. Hailing from
the western Pennsylvania coal country, they had both come to New York City
where they married in
1937. My mom was a
registered nurse and dad was a loan officer for the Personal Finance Company. He often joked that his competition for
the small, personal loans the company specialized in was the Mafia and La Cosa Nostra’s notorious loan sharks. His promotion to branch
manager brought the couple to Riverhead in 1940. I joined them in January 1941.
Since Riverhead would not have its own hospital for another ten years, I was born in Manhattan. Pearl Harbor
was attacked in December, and dad got his commission in the US Navy in 1943.
While he was off to war, my mom took me and returned to upstate New York to
spend 1944 and 1945 near her parents. By December 1945, when my dad returned from
the Pacific War, my kid brother, Charles Botula III, aka Packy¸ had joined us and Skip and Charlie returned to Riverhead,
where we lived happily ever after until 1961 when my mom died of cancer. Shattered by the loss of his Skipper, my father died in 1965.
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| Charles and Mary Botula - 1937 |
Packy and I
both went through the Riverhead school system, although my younger brother
missed out on Aquebogue School. Also, he went to kindergarten, unlike his big
brother. After
graduating from R.H.S. (the Pulaski Street school, not the new
one), I embarked on the career in broadcasting that I had begun at WRIV while
still a sophomore, and my kid brother went off to SUNY Buffalo and a career in
the US Air Force. Now, we’re both retired. Packy lives in Illinois near St.
Louis with his wife Susan, and I live near Austin, Texas, not too far from my
daughter Dana and my five grandchildren. Son Mike lives in Rome, Italy with his
wife Laura.
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| Lt. "Packy" Botula 1969 |
I met and
married Michael and Dana’s mother, Donna, in Phoenix before we moved on to
California to start our family. Our children grew up in California and never
set foot in their father’s home town in New York together until I brought them to
Riverhead for this reunion.
The RHS Class
of 1958 numbered about 117 people when we graduated on that balmy June night. It
was the last of the pre-WW 2 classes to graduate from the building on Pulaski
Street. Most
of the graduates had grown up in and around Riverhead – Flanders,
Jamesport, Wading River, Calverton, Manorville, Baiting Hollow, Mattituck, Laurel
and of course, Aquebogue. Along the way, we were joined by young people who had
moved from other cities and states, and even other countries. We welcomed new
classmates who didn’t even speak English when they started school. They were
from families who had sought new lives in the USA after their own homes in
Europe had been devastated by the war.
Since my hometown already had a large population of Poles who had come
to the US after World War I, many of the newcomers also came from Poland. The
newcomers became part of what would be The
Class of ’58, part of the Riverhead family! For most of us, the bonds of friendship would
last a lifetime. That’s what my son and daughter came to understand on their first
visit together to their father’s home town. By the time we headed back to our
respective homes on Sunday, Mike and Laura and Dana felt right at home.
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| Graduation Night - June 23, 1958 |
The reunion
followed our time-honored format: A reception
on Friday evening, sit-down dinner on Saturday night, and Sunday brunch
to cap it off. The reception this year was at the Outerbanks Restaurant at
Indian Island County Park. We had the Saturday dinner at our class favorite,
Riverhead Polish Hall on Marcy Avenue. Diane Tucci took our latest family portrait before we sat
down to the Polish Hall’s famous home cooking. Finally, Sunday brunch took place at the venerable Birchwood Restaurant, also
in Polish Town, which we old-timers remember as Regula’s Corner.
In between
reunion events, I took the kids on a tour of the town. We drove out to Aquebogue,
past the elementary school where I attended first grade. Past the old Downs’
General Store and US
Post Office building to the Modern Snack Bar. After lunch we
drove up to Iron Pier Beach to gaze across Long Island Sound at Connecticut. Finally
we drove back through Jamesport and back to town along Peconic Bay
Boulevard. Friday, after a stop at the
Riverhead Flower Shop, we headed up to the Roanoke Avenue Cemetery where Mary
and Charles Botula are buried. Michael and Dana never knew their grandparents.
They had died before the kids were born. We placed the two bouquets we had
brought with us, and Dana scraped the moss that had started to form on her
grandparents’ headstones.
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| Dana, Mike and Michael Botula |
Saturday
morning we drove out to Montauk Point and its historic lighthouse, built in
1796. Dana commented on the age of the lighthouse, almost 300 years. That
brought a laugh from Laura, who hails from Rome, which is nearly 3,000 years old! While I waited below,
Michael, Laura and Dana joined the other tourists and climbed to the top of the
light house. Then we drove back to Riverhead and joined the others at the
reunion.
Sunday morning,
Dana and I had coffee with Michael and Laura before they headed to Newark Airport
and their flight back to Rome. Dana and I went on to brunch, and then it was
back to Islip for our flight back to Austin. Our sentimental journey to dad’s
hometown was over.
Ciao!MikeBo
[Mike Botula, the author of LST 920: Charlie Botula’s Long, Slow Target!
is a retired broadcast journalist, government spokesperson and media
consultant. Mike’s book is
available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble Books. You can read more about Mike
Botula at www.mikebotula.com]
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